Grunt’s constant metamorphosis might seem exhausting in theory, but a thoughtful listen will reveal the composition’s intricacies which keep this album endlessly entertaining and fascinating.
With Grunt Derek Piotr uses his eighth solo record to unload a set of short-form brutalist shards of human-digital noise on his own DPSR imprint and a definite challenge to listeners. This challenge could be clarified as one to find the primal within the modern, the primitive within the technological. As did Iannis Xenakis, Piotr takes recognizably analogue sounds—particularly voice, but also acoustic instrumentation, found-sounds and nature recordings–and reconstructs them into 21 intricate electroacoustic miniatures. With these he manages to hybridize the digital and organic very nicely.
The tracks on Grunt don’t unfold gently nor rest upon the ears lightly–or even pleasantly—but erupt forth, startling and staggering, as they give birth to new elements and components. They work more along the lines of Dada rather than say surrealism or a linear aesthetic. “Voice II” splinters violently into being with shards of vocal samples distorting and leaping until settling into a drone. “DZ” brings to mind an automaton choir coming apart as they realize their obsolescence. The album’s title track is a brief but powerful thirty-seven seconds long, and notably according to the press release “substitutes the vocals/instruments/found-sounds of the other pieces for the aggressively juddering vibrations of a Fort Troff Raw Pup, a queer sex toy.” Top that Autechre!
Grunt’s constant metamorphosis might seem exhausting in theory, but a thoughtful listen will reveal the composition’s intricacies which keep this album endlessly entertaining and fascinating.
Grunt is available on DPSR.
